


Here Are All Of My Opinions: Tolkien Edition

by Scedasticity



Series: Here Are All Of My Opinions [1]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 09:24:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17261681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scedasticity/pseuds/Scedasticity
Summary: Various Tolkien meta from tumblr and elsewhere.





	1. Miscellaneous thoughts

Middle-earth: Where you get to choose between the writing system invented by the violent narcissist who led most of his relatives to their deaths or the dude sulking about being friendzoned due to the most epic couple in history.

…Come to think of it, why did Thingol ban Quenya but not Tengwar? Did no one TELL him?

…Was it just too useful and widely adopted already? If so, ouch for Daeron.

* * *

I just figured out that when people complain about Tolkien’s elves being too perfect, they are talking about them being almost universally pretty, strong, agile, fast, good singing voices, usually skilled in at least one art form (broadly interpreted), etc. etc. etc.

Whereas I’m looking at how many of them do not even REMOTELY have their act together, and how they continually get themselves into (or sometimes are put into by circumstances beyond their control) situations where being pretty and strong and agile and so on just isn’t good enough. So they fail.

And – to me – failure is INCOMPATIBLE with perfection. It may be ACCEPTABLE, it may even be unavoidable, but it rules out perfection. Ergo, elves are not perfect.

I wonder if this says more about the way I see elves or the way I see perfection?

* * *

**On Faramir not knowing what was in Cirith Ungol despite speaking Sindarin:**

Hmmm…

They do live in a world where godzillarantulas feature prominently in mythology and history (Ungoliant plunged the world into darkness, scared the crap out of Sauron’s old boss, etc) and existed within the last century in Mirkwood. Assuming they ever talk to anyone who’s been to Mirkwood. They…  _probably_  know they were giant spiders in Mirkwood pretty recently? It’s hard to figure out how much anyone in Middle-earth has been talking to anyone else when we didn’t actually see it.

On the other hand – what if it’s the giant evil spiders’ prominence in history/mythology that’s causing trouble? What if lots of evil/nasty things/places get called “spider” just to indicate how nasty and evil they are, rather than any association with literal spiders, and it’s just… overloaded? Maybe the bad part of town in Minas Tirith is the Spider District. Maybe every tavern trying to be edgy calls itself the Spiderweb.

Actually spider/Ungoliant references could be really appealing to Gondorians trying to be edgy. They’re dark and evil! Plunged the world into darkness! But they AREN’T involved in the war they’re actually fighting, they aren’t directly associated with Sauron at all, so getting too interested in them would be creepy without being potentially treasonous. Because no one’s ACTUALLY going to worship those dangerous but not epic spiders up in Mirkwood, and no one’s heard anything from any proper spawn of Ungoliant in ages and ages.

In fact, spider/Ungoliant references might be appealing to ORCS trying to express that something is nasty and creepy! Nobody likes Ungoliant.

Maybe Faramir’s been to fourteen different Spider Caves across Ithilien, and half of them he didn’t even see regular spiders in, they’re just dark and damp and may have had orcs at some point, or something, and at some point in history someone got spooked. So you know, it’s POSSIBLE Spider Pass has something to do with spiders? But really it just means people don’t like it.

(The problem with this theory is we never actually SAW anyone overusing spider references. But it’s plausible they would!)

* * *

**On the presumptuousness of assuming Gandalf, a Maia, has a binary gender:**

It would also be presumptuous to discount Gandalf’s presentation as male merely because of his original lack of biological sex (or biological species for that matter).

Has Olorin always identified as male? Did he only start identifying as male when he chose to become a wizard and got a body he couldn’t easily discard? Does he not particularly identify as male even now, he just presents that way because it makes things simpler? We don’t know, and it would be rude to ask.

(Ten years after the last of the hobbits in Valinor die -- because he would have stayed Gandalf for them I'm sure -- anyway a while after that: Olorin shows up at Melian's door in the middle of the night.

"All this... physical body stuff -- how long does it take to get over it?"

Melian invites him in for a drink, and then says "I'm still drinking alcohol Olorin."

"Aw shit" says Olorin and hopes the hobbits' pipeweed garden is still intact.)

* * *

**On the weirdness of where did hobbits come from:**

I believe Iluvatar quietly made the dwarves sentient because he felt sorry for Aule.

Also, following this, Aule’s wife, nature goddess Yavanna, was pissed because Iluvatar had okayed her husband’s weird side project who were already super hyped about axes and Did No One Care About The Trees, so Iluvatar okayed her to create Ents.

You know, here’s a theory about hobbits – secret project of Ulmo’s. Ulmo is the god of the sea and good advice which gets ignored, and I can totally see him going to Iluvatar and saying “I have an idea for a sentient species that won’t be such a disaster factory as all the others, but I don’t want anyone to know it was me because then I’d have to TALK about it”. And that’s why hobbits are generally inlanders – to make sure no one guesses their true origin.

* * *

**Coming in after a discussion of (lack of) naming creativity:**

Yeah but Greenleaf wasn’t his last name, it was tossed in as a byname in that one poem for the sake of the meter. I don’t see anything odd about calling Sauron’s volcano Mount Doom.

…I will give you that the House of Feanor seems to not have been very good with names, see also: seven fucking kids named Prefixfinwe. This includes you, Nerdanel, I hate to agree with Feanor but you cannot name both twins the same thing.

* * *

The Rivendell sequence in the first Hobbit movie really annoyed me and lowered my opinion of all the movie!dwarves, because EVEN GIVEN the movie’s humorless, uptight version of Rivendell, the elves were offering shelter and hospitality while asking nothing in return, and EVEN GIVEN the movie’s casting of the wood elves as refusing aid, these elves are on the other side of a mountain range and had nothing to do with it, so the dwarves have no legitimate grievance with them; and yet the dwarves are deliberately rude, obnoxious, destructive, and unappreciative. And these aren’t just random adventuring dwarves, they’re royals.

* * *

So as to avoid derailing a different post:

Elrond would not agree that Legolas marrying Gimli is worse than the Arwen situation, because Arwen doesn’t just want to marry a mortal, she wants to BECOME mortal. Which means not only is she going to die, she’ll leave the world when she does, and they will never see her again until the end of the world. If then. Legolas is going West, sure, but he’s not DYING, and there’s no reason to believe his afterlife destination’s been changed. Dwarves aren’t exactly mortal anyway. (And Elrond likely objects to dwarves less than Thranduil anyway; he’s not a Doriath survivor, and he’s mostly lived with Noldor.)  
Elrond would probably be too well-mannered to tell Thranduil to get over himself and count his blessings.

* * *

I feel like a very large number of the disasters and tragedies in First Age Middle-Earth can be traced back to nobody there being familiar with the idea that when you are in a hole, stop digging. Also, being unable to do something is sometimes a good enough reason not to try it, and “full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes” is not always a viable strategy.

(The Noldor were the worst, but Thingol, Luthien, Beren, Tuor, Elwing, Turin, Dior – none of them knew when to stop.) (Morgoth and Sauron didn’t know when to stop, either.)

…For all the discussion lately about humans being Team “Hold My Beer And Watch This”, First Age Elves were Team *Chug beer* *Start juggling knives torches grenades and wasp nest* “Watch THIS”.


	2. A Whole Bunch of Dead Elven Royalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See if they were PERFECT they wouldn't have done all THIS shit.

Want an account of royal high elves dying in the First Age? Tough, here’s one anyway.

**Noldor Royalty Dying in the First Age (and a Little Before It, as a bonus)**

0\. (Semi-retired) King Finwe gets killed by Melkor aka Morgoth, Sauron’s boss.

Melkor also steals the Silmarils, the finest work of Finwe’s beloved and obstreperous eldest son Fëanor, and takes off out of the West for Middle-Earth. Fëanor swears an oath to wreak vengeance and reclaim the Silmarils, and gets all his sons to swear it too. His younger half-brothers (who he did not get along with at all well) don’t swear, but do agree to go with him to Middle-Earth in a spirit of reconciliation and family togetherness. One of them turns back after they get told they’re all really Doomed if they don’t turn back – it may also have had to do with one of Fëanor’s people killing his brother-in-law? Right, the First Kinslaying – when the sea-elves wouldn’t agree to give up their boats/defy the gods to ferry the Noldor east, Fëanor and sons and partisans killed them and took the boats by force in the First Kinslaying. Then, Fëanor and sons and partisans sail across to Middle-Earth, and instead of sending the boats back for his half-brother and nephews and nieces and all their people, Fëanor has the boats burned. Which brings us to

1\. Amrod, according to some versions burned to death in a boat he was hiding in, by his unknowing father and brothers. Ooooops. In other versions he lives until much later.

Putting this tragedy behind them (or not having to, as the case may be), they attack Melkor, and this goes about as well as you’d expect.

2\. Fëanor. He got his sons to swear the oath again to make him feel better.

Further efforts from Fëanor’s sons only got the oldest captured and tormented for years, and then they were kinda stuck for a while.

Meanwhile SOME people might have taken the whole burnt ships incident as a hint to head home and beg forgiveness, but not these guys. No, they trek farther north and get to Middle-Earth by crossing unstable glaciers on foot. This can’t possibly go wrong.

3\. Elenwe, Fëanor’s half-brother Fingolfin’s second son’s wife, killed by the Grinding Ice.

Despite this and many other casualties, they do arrive, at the same time the Sun rises for the first time and the First Age properly begins. There’s a battle. Which is much more successful! However

4\. Argon, Fingolfin’s youngest, died in the battle. He got left out of the published Silmarillion, I guess because he didn’t do anything interesting.

They manage to rescue Fëanor’s eldest and besiege Melkor and spread out and set up their own kingdoms and stuff, and for a while things are going pretty well! Things get really awkward when the locals find out about the Kinslaying thing, of course, and people routinely drop out of contact for decades at a time, but whatever. So no one’s worried enough to search more than “ride around calling for a bit” when Fingolfin’s daughter Aredhel disappears. She reappears some years later with her son, and unfortunately is soon followed by her husband.

5\. Aredhel, killed by her husband, who was aiming for their son. Not that his deliberately killing her would be that surprising, the relationship was really fucked up under the most generous interpretations.  
(No number) Her husband was executed pretty much immediately but I’m not counting him.

(That happened in Turgon’s super-secret city btw – it’s not at all clear he actually told his father or brother or cousins that Aredhel had died.)

Anyway, things continue on, until suddenly DRAGONS. The Siege of Angband is broken; the Battle of Sudden Flame ruins a big chunk of the landscape and various fortresses.

6\. Angrod  
7\. Aegnor  
Both died in the battle, either in actual battle or in a “river of fire”. They’re the younger sons of Fingolfin’s younger brother, and also Galadriel’s middle brothers.

8\. Fingolfin himself, decided to challenge Melkor to single combat. He made a pretty good showing considering, but, you know. Melkor.

After that everything started going downhill.

9\. Finrod (Galadriel’s oldest brother) died killing a (evil) wolf, after being imprisoned by Sauron in a lightless dungeon listening to his companions getting eaten for at least a couple weeks. He maybe shouldn’t have challenged a demigod to a duel of magic.

He did succeed in keeping the person he was trying to protect alive long enough for help to arrive, but he might not have been in that position if a pair of his cousins from the Fëanorion branch of the family hadn’t run him out of his own capital. His nephew and successor never forgave the sons of Fëanor and refused to show up for the next battle.

(Also, the person Finrod kept alive was Beren, and Beren and Luthien went on to retrieve a single Silmaril, because that was what Luthien’s father Thingol said Beren needed to do to marry her. This will come up again.)

10\. Fingon, High King of the Noldor since his father Fingolfin died, was weirdly enough the only Noldor royalty recorded to have died in the Nirnaeth Arnediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. His body ended up in poor condition.

At this point the First Age civilization was a shambles. There were still several hidden kingdoms intact and other isolated communities, but most of the subcontinent was officially completely unsafe. It was particularly unsafe if you got involved with one of the cursed children of Hurin.

11\. Orodreth, Angrod’s son and Finrod’s successor, died when the kingdom was invaded by a dragon.  
12\. Finduilas, Orodreth’s daughter, got pinned to a tree with a spear by orcs. They had been taking her as a slave to Melkor’s stronghold, after Turin son of Hurin turned out to be too cursed to rescue her when she was right in front of him (not his fault, but sucked for her); some other humans showed up and tried to free the column of prisoners, but the orcs killed them before they could be saved.

So that’s Nargothrond down.

(We now pause for a few Sindar royal deaths:  
A. Thingol, killed by dwarves who thought he was trying to stiff them on payment and/or wanted the Silmaril. His demigod wife was too upset to stay.  
B. Luthien, lived a human life with Beren and died a human death.  
This left Luthien’s son Dior ruling the Sindar.)

So, after the unnumbered tears battle, the Sons of Fëanor don’t have any kingdom left, and they’ve lost most of their armies, and then they think hey. We’re obviously not going to get very far trying to get the jewels back from Melkor. But consider – there’s that one that the Sindar have! So they write to Dior and are like, that’s our dad’s jewel, and we swore ourselves to eternal damnation if we didn’t get it back. So give it back. Or else. And Dior’s like, my parents went through hell to get that Silmaril, also you’re disgusting kinslayers. So the sons of Fëanor are like, we’ll show you kinslaying.

So they invaded Doriath and killed lots of people including Dior and his wife, and some rogue underlings left Dior’s little sons to die in the wilderness. But escaping Sindar carried away Dior’s baby daughter Elwing, and the Silmaril.

Anyway Noldor royal death toll of the Second Kinslaying:  
13\. Celegorm, who killed Dior while being killed by him  
14\. Curufin  
15\. Caranthir  
And also any claim the sons of Fëanor still had on hero status.

(Royal Sindar death toll:  
C. Dior  
D. Dior’s wife Nimloth  
E and F. Elured and Elurin  
And fuck knows how many cousins and stuff.)

Meanwhile back in Turgon’s super-secret city of Gondolin Aredhel’s son Maeglin was besotted with Turgon’s daughter Idril, who besides being his first cousin was not into him. He took it really badly when she married the human Tuor, and after he went patrolling too far out in a huff, he got captured and actually believed Melkor when Melkor said he’d give him Gondolin and Idril if he came over and sold out the city. So, a while later, Melkor’s forces invade and sack the place.

16\. Turgon probably could have evacuated – definitely could have in earlier years – but couldn’t bring himself to leave his city, and one of his towers fell on him.  
17\. Maeglin got thrown off a cliff by Tuor when he tried to kill him and seize Idril.

Thanks to Idril’s foresight, a bunch of people from Gondolin did manage to evacuate. They settled with refugees from Doriath at the mouth of the river Sirion. Eventually Idril and Tuor’s son Eärendil married Elwing.

Idril didn’t die, but she did go missing for the rest of the Age when she and Tuor attempted to sail West to beg for help and got stranded somewhere in the enchanted oceans. Eärendil looked for his parents a lot but never found them.

Elwing still had that Silmaril.

While Eärendil was away on one of his many sea voyages, the (remaining) sons of Fëanor showed up, and no one turned out to be interested in giving them what they wanted, so the Third Kinslaying was a go!

18\. Amras died in the fighting;  
1\. So did Amrod, if he wasn’t already dead for 500 years.

Elwing threw herself into the sea to get away, wearing the Silmaril. Then she turned into a bird and flew away, to find Eärendil and eventually make their way West.

Elwing and Eärendil’s young children are left behind, but fortunately for them the remaining two sons of Fëanor were the “sane” ones and never were supporters of the abandon children to die in wilderness thing, so they took in little Elrond and Elros. Yay?

So now everyone left on the subcontinent was holed up on this one island or hiding in the woods somewhere.

Eventually the Valar heeded Eärendil’s plea, and came and stomped Melkor, in the process wrecking the subcontinent to the point where it sank. They also retrieved the other two Silmarils.

The two remaining sons of Fëanor demanded the jewels back. The Valar’s herald said basically ‘after everything you did? No’ so they snuck in and stole the jewels anyway. But it turned out the Silmarils didn’t think much of everything they’d done, either, and burned them.

19\. Maedhros, jumped into a fiery crack in the earth because he couldn’t deal with the pain of the Silmaril being offended at him, and everything.

So endeth the royal death toll.

(Who lived?  
–Maglor, the last surviving son of Fëanor, threw the Silmaril he stole into the sea, and is said to wander the coasts lamenting still.  
–Galadriel, obviously. It’s actually really unclear where she was during a lot of the excitement. Possibly in Doriath, possibly off east all the way off the subcontinent, which would explain why she doesn't get mentioned during any of the late First Age calamities.  
–Idril, missing, but presumably retrieved at some point – but not to Middle-Earth.  
–Celebrimbor, Fëanor’s grandson, who renounced his family along about the Finrod incident and didn’t do the Second or Third Kinslayings. He went on to invent the non-evil Rings of Power, which I guess seemed like a good idea at the time.  
–Elrond and Elros, though Elros chose to become human quickly.  
–Ereinion Gil-Galad, Orodreth’s son, became high king of the Noldor and died at the end of the Second Age.  
–And technically Eärendil is still alive. On the Sindar side, Elrond and Elros are Thingol's only surviving direct descendants. Celeborn is a great-nephew or cousin of some description. Oropher I don't THINK was closely related to the Sindar royal family, but he took his son Thranduil and went on to found the kingdom that eventually became Mirkwood, so he probably counts as royal.)


End file.
